UK semiconductor designer ARM says it has entered into a “multi-year” agreement with software giant Oracle to optimize Java for ARM platforms.

The companies say their agreement will focus on delivering “throughput and efficient scalability” for ARM-based systems and reflects the “increasing applicability” of combining ARM (Cambridge, UK) and Oracle (Redwood City, CA, USA) technology in server and network infrastructure.

The collaboration is aimed largely at benefiting emerging applications in the M2M market, including industrial control, factory automation and single-board computers.

ARM and Oracle will also cooperate in areas like improving boot-up performance, power savings and library optimization – all of which are highly relevant to enterprise and embedded markets.

“The long-standing relationship between ARM and Oracle has enabled our mutual technologies to be deployed across a broad spectrum of products and applications,” said Henrik Stahl, vice president of Java Product Management for Oracle. “Enterprise and embedded customers [will be able to] reap the benefits of high-performance, energy-efficient platforms based on ARM technology.”

According to Ian Drew, the chief marketing officer of ARM, the industry has been in need of a software ecosystem that can support enterprise infrastructure using high-performance ARM technology.

“This extended relationship with Oracle to enhance Java … is an important step in growing the ARM ecosystem, which is enabling businesses and consumers worldwide to discover new levels of energy efficiency and advanced performance,” he said.

ARM and Oracle have been collaborating on Java since 1996, when ARM helped to port the Java operating system to ARM architecture.

Since then, the companies have collaborated in a number of areas and ARM recently joined the Java Community Process Executive Committee, set up to help steer Java technology for embedded markets.